For parents and others involved in raising children, nothing even comes close to the importance placed on ensuring the child's safety at all times, day and night. This notion is perhaps best demonstrated in the safety precautions taken while traveling in an automobile. Mandated not only by conscience, but also by law, small children are placed in safety seats at all times while traveling in an automobile. While safety seats provide the best safety for a child that technology can provide, they raise the child upward and forward, thus making it easier for them to kick their feet and reach the surface of the seat in front of them. While this kicking and tapping motion can be aggravating for others in the vehicle, it also produces physical damage in the form of scuff marks and dirt to the vehicle's interior, particularly the front seat backs. Such marks and dirt obviously require time and care to remove. Should the marks be permanent, they can negatively affect the resale value of the car at trade in time.
Various solutions have been presented to protect the seat back surface from damage caused by the shoes of small passengers located in the rear seats, however each suffers from one (1) or more disadvantage or deficiency with respect to design, function, or effectiveness. Some examples include positioning a towel or piece of card board over the seat back. These solutions are unsightly, difficult to maintain in position and typically are easily torn away by the child passenger. Other solutions include devices which hang on the back of seat; such devices typically include a flexible sheet which can be deployed from a roller attached to an upper rear surface of the seat. An example of such a device can be seen by in U.S. Pat. No. 7,210,738, issued in the name of Mahaffy. However, these devices are easy damaged by the child and can easy be moved aside leaving the seat back open to damage. Full seat covers are not always desirable and are commonly more easily damaged than the seat.
Accordingly, there exists a need for a means by which the rear seat surface in motor vehicles can be protected from dirt and scuff marks from a child's feet. The development of the present invention substantially departs from the conventional solutions and in doing so fulfills this need.